Nurlanbekova.Y.K.

Ibraimova B.S.

Kazakh State Women Teacher Training University

Evaluation and Assessment

Students’ progress over a period of time helps in assessing and improvements or setbacks in their performance. Periodical evaluation of students is an important tool to determine whether the students are benefiting from the teaching practices being employed at educational institutions. Teachers are today experimenting with a lot many techniques, which are different from the traditional examinations and tests. These include peer assessment, classroom observation, performance assessment and self evaluation.

Student evaluation is necessary for the following reasons:

It helps students to learn more effectively and in a much better way.

It is an interesting experience for both the teachers and the students.

· It helps in integrating research closely with undergraduate learning.

· It is required to be carried out to meet quality assurance procedures.

· It helps in developing new learning media, especially blended learning and e-learning.

Student evaluation can be done in various ways such as exams, rubrics, progress reports, parent-teacher meetings, and also self-evaluation.

How to evaluate students in the above-mentioned ways.

Use of Rubrics

· The Rubric is a tool used for authentic assessment of student performance which is useful in assessing subjective and complex criteria.

· It simulates real life activity by engaging students in the process of solving real-life problems.

· It is a formative assessment type and is a continuing part of the learning and teaching process.

· It uses a range to rate student performance and focuses on measuring a previously stated objective.

· It consists of some performance characteristics that are arranged in levels to indicate the degrees to which standard are being met.

The advantages of using rubrics for student evaluation are as follows:

· It shows the students how they will be evaluated in a clear-cut way.

· It enables the teachers to conduct a consistent and objective assessment, while focusing them to clarify their criteria in precise terms.

· It provides teachers with benchmarks against which they can measure student performance and document the progress.

· It also gives useful feedback with regard to the effectiveness of teaching techniques.

Self-evaluation

Here are simple tips to make students comfortable with self evaluation:

· Teacher need to first make them understand the concept by defining self-evaluation to them.

· Talk to the students about the benefits of self-evaluation and deal with any misconceptions they might have about it.

· Start by creating small opportunities for self-evaluation. Teacher can use many pre-designed forms to make students practice self-evaluation every day in the classroom.

· Teacher can work with a colleague or a peer in doing this as it will enhance personal assessment.

There are many other techniques we can use for evaluation of student performance.

· Teacher can use a combination of traditional examinations, quizzes, homework assignments, individual or group presentations, essays and many more methods to evaluate his students.

· Parent teacher meetings are also a great platforms for both the parents and teachers to interact and share information about the students’ progress.

· Teacher can also ask students to design a webpage for concepts or topics taught in the class. This will help the teacher to better gauge students’ understanding of the concept.

· Essays are also one great method to evaluate the grasp of students about a particular topics. Essays require them to organize and communicate their thoughts clearly.

Ideally, students will increasingly assume responsibility for the setting of their learning targets and also for the monitoring or tracking of those targets. In practice, of course, students' ability to do this will vary, and teacher assistance will be more important to some students than others. The provision of suitable 'tracking' sheets is an obvious way for teachers to assist all students.

As with other aspects of instruction, the use of modeling and explicit teaching is of relevance here. Teachers commonly use the SMART acronym as a way of guiding students in the design of a learning target. In this acronym:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Achievable or Attainable
R  = Relevant
T  = Time-bound

The SMART method of setting learning targets:

Specific

The learning target must be specific rather than general: “I will include a topic sentence in each paragraph' rather than 'I will improve my paragraphing”.

Measurable

It must be possible to know whether the learning target has been accomplished, so there needs to be some way of measuring this. 'I will learn my 7 times table', for instance, could be measured by 'Being able to recite to my teacher/parent/peer the table X times without making mistakes.'

Achievable

The achievement of the learning target must be something the student is capable of attaining. Where the prospect of achievement seems daunting, the learning target can be broken down into a series of steps so that the student has the prospect of experiencing success. For example, instead of a learning target that states we will use correct spelling', it is better to concentrate on the use of individual spelling strategies so that, over time, the student builds up a repertoire of strategies designed to achieve the aim of improving his or her ability to spell correctly.

The setting of unachievable learning targets will inevitably lead to lack of motivation and low self-esteem.

Relevant

The learning target needs to be significant and relevant to the student's present learning. If students are left to set learning targets without any guidance, at least initially there is a danger that such targets will be less relevant than if they are set in the context of understanding “What I know or can do now/ what I still need to know or be able to do/ how I can go about making that improvement”.

Time-bound

Students should specify when they aim to achieve the target. Time-bound learning targets are easier to evaluate and track than those which have no particular time period attached to their achievement.

Students' ability to manage and organize their own time in order to complete set tasks is a crucial aspect of self-assessment. Schools recognize this when they institute a variety of structures to support students developing independence in this area; the student diary is one example.

Literature:

Brown, H.D. (2004). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

Fulcher, G. & Davidson, F. (2007). Language Testing and Assessment. London: Routledge.

Luoma, S. (2004). Assessing Speaking. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rea-Dickins, P. & Germaine, K. (1992). Evaluation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Weigle, S.C. (2002). Assessing writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.